... , the PCC continued to deny that there was any until the Guardian was able to establish incontrovertibly that there was. While the story of how the News of the World's criminality was finally exposed makes for compelling reading, the meat of the book has to be what it tells us about Gordon Brown's relationship with Murdoch and his representatives and what Cameron had to do to get Murdoch to change sides. As Davies points out, since 1979, 'no British government has been elected without the support of Rupert Murdoch....Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown have consistently cleared their diaries and welcomed him to the inner sanctum of their governments (and then disclosed as little as possible of ...

... those who didn't vote at all. Anyone with experience of electoral politics should have looked at the figures and concluded that the UK wasn't that far off a hung Parliament in 2005. Or to put it another way: the next election would be very close indeed. The Conservative Party clearly had advisers who told them that. More importantly David Cameron, its new leader, was prepared to take a considered view about how to deal with this eventuality. In 2006 he invited Brian Walden to address the Conservative Parliamentary Party on likely scenarios it would face during and after the next general election. Walden was an astute choice to give this advice to a partisan audience. An experienced media ...

... all the evidence of criminality and corruption within News Corp, Ed Balls had an article condemning the 'Millionaires' Budget' in the Sun. Murdoch clearly suffered some hard knocks, but fundamentally nothing has changed. He is still in a position to punish quite openly a government that has crossed him without it causing any apparent public disquiet. If Cameron had resisted the pressure to establish the Leveson Inquiry and had remained loyal to his close friend and riding partner, Rebekah Brooks, the Sunday Times sting would never have taken place and the Sun would have supported the budget as a masterpiece of statesmanship and fairness. The ability of a billionaire newspaper owner, one of Britain's oligarchs, to ...

... No such record is listed. I contacted the National Archives press office. The relevant archivists were unable to locate the document. Since it appears unlikely that The Times has outright invented such an important document, the indication is that it came from somewhere other than the National Archives and The Times has obfuscated its true origin for reasons unknown. Cameron, Johnson and SIS I've never quite known what to make of David Cameron's claim that he was 'groomed' by the KGB during the mid-1980s. When he was vetted to become special adviser to Norman Lamont in the Treasury in 1990, Cameron supposedly told MI5 about the incident.4 4 Speaking to students at the University of Moscow in 2011, ...

... build-up in the Middle East( [17]) and it is just conceivable that the beleaguered Republicans will try pressing the terrorism/patriotism button once again in the Middle East.( [18]) Welcome to Cameronia The final nail in the coffin of UK support for the neo-cons' adventures was driven in by Conservative Party leader David Cameron. On the 2006 anniversary of 9-11, Cameron spoke to the British American Project (BAP). He produced the expected homilies about the US and the UK, the special relationship, democracy and terrorism; rejected anti-Americanism (but felt it necessary to refer to it);but explicitly rejected the neo-conservative foreign policies of Bush and Blair ...

... . But it is also an illustration of the central tactic in the pro-Israel media playbook: accuse anyone who criticises Israel of being an anti-semite.1 0 While the Labour Party's membership has ballooned since Corbyn became leader,1 1 the Conservative Party is in what may be terminal decline: membership has fallen from 253,000 to 140,00 since Cameron was chosen; 290 of the Party's 650 associations have fewer than 100 members;1 2 and the average age of the members is over 60 and may be 8 <http://off-guardian.org/2016/04/03/panama-papers-cause- guardian-to-collapse-into-self-par ody/> 9 See for example <http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ ...

... , having McKinsied the BBC and subsequently joined the consultancy, was installed by Blair as head of his Forward Strategy Unit. And, of course, the New Labour government threw money at McKinsey for consultancy contracts 'from the NHS to the defence ministry', the total amount a closely guarded secret. 7 McKinsey's relationship with government has continued under Cameron: William Hague used to work for them and was welcomed by the Economist as 'the McKinsey Foreign Secretary '.8 Another McKinsey man is Nat Wei, a Baron, of 4 David Craig, Rip-Off, (The Original Book Company, 2005), p. 93 5 For McKinsey at the BBC see Craig (see note 4) pp ...

... Goldman Sachs. Hank Paulson – architect of the 2009 US bailout – was ex Goldman Sachs. Greece's interim technocrat government in 2011 was headed by Lucas Papademos – also ex Goldman Sachs. The privatisation of public money in the West is thus more or less complete.’ 2 Bankers in Whitehall In September Ian Fraser commented on his blog: 'When David Cameron reshuffled his cabinet earlier this week, the arrival of a trio City of London bankers and consultants at Her Majesty's Treasury went almost unnoticed. This in my view was a lacuna. The three men are Paul Deighton, a former Goldman Sachs partner and chief operating officer for Europe, Sajid Javid, a former global head of credit trading ...

... his attentions seemed unreceptive, he moved on to someone else. Johnson justifies his affairs on the grounds that he is 'bursting with spunk'. All of this scandal that would normally have resulted in career death merely slowed him down. What of the future? Johnson has used his position as Mayor of London as a vehicle to undermine David Cameron and to campaign for the leadership of the Conservative Party. The office has provided him with endless opportunities for self- advertisement from appearing in East Enders to hijacking the Olympics. Is he unstoppable? In an obvious attempt to embarrass the Government, he recently called for the top rate of tax to be cut to 40%, massaging ...